A/N: This is short, but I figured short is better than nothing.
Ria's pad is one place that ain't changed. I could walk up to the door and not be surprised to see Tim come barreling out, ready to hunt up a little action – most likely with Ria screaming in the background that I wasn't to get him into any fucking trouble, if I valued my skin. I wish.
Curly walks right in and I follow, 'cause what else am I going to do?
After the deal with the chicks I yelled at, making me think about our ages, I ain't sure what I'm gonna see, what changes to expect. I know how old Ria is, but I lost perspective somewhere, I guess, because she looks older than forty five to me. Hell, if she ain't starting to look like Ma, peroxide or no peroxide. But that ain't even the real shocker.
If it was freaky to see Curly all grown up, that ain't nothing compared to seeing Angela. She was, like him, frozen as this little ten year old kid in my mind.
Mostly what I remember is Ma telling me, or Tim, or Curly or any combination of us, not to cuss in front of Angela, not to fart in front of her, not to do anything in front of her that might spoil her precious angel self.
Angela stands there, half a scowl on her face, staring me out. If she was a random chick giving me that look I'd write her off as a bitch, sure enough. But suddenly she smiles. And she's beautiful, my little sister.
"I'd forgotten how much you look like Tim." She hugs me, hardly reaching my chest.
You know how you don't haveta think about going down stairs? And if you do try to think it through it gets weird, your movements go all wrong? Like that, just for a second, I forget how to hug someone. I have to remind my arms what to do. It's been a while.
"Welcome home," says Angel and then she's stepping back and wiping her eyes and cussing herself for being a candy-ass. Then her hand clamps across her mouth and she shoots out the room.
Curly rolls his eyes. "She still puking?" he asks Ria, who nods.
"I was the same –" she breaks off, obviously realizing that memories of her own pregnancies ain't exactly tactful, with me stood in front of her.
"You hear from Johnjo and Pat?" I ask her, I ain't real sure why. I hardly knew them, my 'brothers'. They're older than Ria and had left home by the time I was a toddler. The 'in and out of jail' kind of leaving home. Johnjo was around for a while when I was about ten. Ma never talked about them much. It was Danny, who went down in Korea, was her golden boy. Ghosts don't never need parole.
Ria pulls a face. "Got a Christmas card from Johnjo's wife. They're livin' up north. I got the address somewhere. Ain't heard from Pat in a while." She looks like she'd be happy to add me to that list of long lost relatives.
"Uncle Pat the one who married a Cherokee girl?" Curly pipes up.
Ria gives him a tight lipped nod that holds a world of meaning, mostly 'we don't talk about that.' She fixes me with a look that's so like Ma it's scary. "Curly's doing good. He's got a steady job, now, he don't need no one draggin' him down..."
"I ain't intending on –"
"I mean it, Dom. I ain't happy about you staying at his place, he needs to keep his head straight."
"I'm right here, Ma," says Curly, "an' I told you, everything's cool."
I swallow hard. "I got a job, too. Gotta see the PO, Monday –"
She sniffs. "A weekend's plenty long enough for you to raise hell, an' you know it."
"Fuckin' hell, Ria. Whaddya want from me? Ten years I was in that fucking place, you can't just say 'welcome home'?" I spin around, head for the entryway. Realize that it's the first time I walked out of a place by my own choosing in all those ten fucking years I just mentioned, and I get stuck, frozen by that thought, at the front door.
I'm breathing too hard. I can feel my heart racing but I can't do nothing but stare at the fucking door handle.
"Dom?" I force myself to look at Angela when she speaks to me. She smiles. "Can you an' Curly give me a ride home?" She has to slide past me, to reach the door and open it and once it's open I have no problem walking through, out onto the porch.
It's Curly's car, Curly's the one doing the driving. I wonder why she said it that way? Can you and Curly give me a ride home... It ain't like we come as a package. A team. I'mma crash at his for a little while, is all.
"I was there, when Tim found out, about you, y'know." Angela's voice is quiet from the back seat. I don't look around. "He was mad as hell. He said –"
"Angel!" Curly slams his fist into the dashboard.
She lets fly at him. "Why should I shut up about him? It's like you wanna pretend he never existed! He ain't dead, Curly, you get that?" She kicks the back of his seat in frustration and he squawks and the car swerves some. "He ain't dead!" Angela repeats, a note of desperation in her voice. "Jesus Christ, you're as bad as Ma, y'know that? She won't talk about Dom, you won't talk about Tim – "
Curly wrenches the wheel over and the car scrapes the curb, slamming to a stop. He twists around in his seat. "You wanna talk about Tim? Talk. Go on. Fuckin' talk! Only you ain't got nothin' new to say, have ya? Anything you gotta say'll be years out of date, won't it?" She tries to get a word in, but he carries right on, "I know what you wanna say, Angel. You wanna go on about how great he was, how he looked out for us, how fucking superhuman he was? Well, tell me this, if he was so fucking great, where is he now?"
I wait for her to burst into tears. She don't. The scowl comes back and she flips him the bird. I guess she ain't got no comeback to the truth.
I want to wind the clock back, to when none of 'em knew what I knew. When I could hang out at my sister's house without it being weird. When Tim was here, looking out for them and I only had myself to look out for.
If I was still nineteen and they was still kids, what would I do, apart from tell 'em to shut the hell up? I know, in my heart, that I woulda used Tim as a buffer, woulda told him to get them in line.
I look at Curly and then I look at Angela. How the fuck can they be older than I feel? How do I make it all fit?
"Tell ya one thing Tim wasn't no good at." My comment drops into the space between their glaring match and they turn to me in shock. "He was a crappy driving instructor, 'cause you can't drive for shit, Curly Shepard."
Angel snorts and Curly starts to protest. Then they laugh out loud.
"I was barely legal to drive, when he went away..." Curly begins again and Angel hoots with laughter and slaps him on the shoulder.
"See if you can get me home in one piece, huh?"
An' they're both smiling as we pull away and I feel like I did okay. I ain't sure what I did, but it feels like something.
It ain't the same place as I had. But it feels like it might be a place.